


rabbit-hearted girl

by Tyleet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I must become a lion-hearted girl<br/>ready for a fight<br/>before I make the final sacrifice.<br/>-Florence + the Machine</p>
            </blockquote>





	rabbit-hearted girl

The day of Sherlock Holmes’ funeral, she calls in sick to work. She doesn’t stay at home, because too many people know where she lives—Greg, Sally, David, John Watson. And Jim Moriarty, of course. And anyway, it’s too vulnerable, being all alone in those enclosed spaces, with only Toby or cadavers around to witness anything.

She can’t go to the funeral. That would be suspicious, she thinks, unless it would be suspicious if she didn’t go. She dresses for mourning, in a black dress that he wouldn’t have liked, and when she checks herself in the mirror she looks like a ghost—like a corpse, even, with the purple bruises under her eyes, the unhappy cast to her mouth.

She can’t go to the funeral.

Instead, she goes to the South Bank, breathing a little bit easier in the crowds around the National Theatre, the stream of tourists wandering towards the Eye and the students and old men clustered at the book market. She tries to blend in, a bit, self-conscious in her dress and high heels, handing over far too much money for a cappuccino at a busy café. She sits with her back against the wall.

She takes out her phone, and looks at airline tickets. At first she looks at Italy, because she’s always wanted to go to Italy, and never has—only then she remembers that she won’t want to stick out, so maybe she should go to America, where at least they speak English. An American song comes on the café’s speakers, like an omen:

_I could try to do these dishes  
or I could go to Australia  
carry a bowie knife and wear my hair  
like Hepburn parted on the side. _

Australia, Molly thinks, perfect. She pulls out her credit card. She puts it back again.

She can’t do this.

A week ago, Sherlock had sat with her in the morgue, lights switched off, the fluorescent echo from the hallway casting strange shadows on his face, asking her in a low, almost emotionless voice to help him die.

He’d told her it was necessary, that otherwise people would die, and she’d believed him, because she always believed him.

But that was before she’d seen the headlines in the Guardian and the Star this morning, the grieving ex-military man condemning those he termed “the pathetic internet bloggers” for refusing to acknowledge the “very real and terrible murder of the best man I’ve ever known.” His name had been Sebastian Moran, and she might almost have believed that he thought Richard Brook was his best friend, only she’d recognized that face, remembered seeing him smile at Jim from IT, remembered the slow smile Jim had sent back. You only smiled like that if you were in on the joke.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers to her phone. Of course going to Australia will look suspicious, will look like she’s running, like she’s hiding something. But she’s terrified she’s going to slip up, say the wrong thing, react the wrong way, and that someone somewhere will not have forgotten her and that will be worse.

She likes John Watson. She doesn’t want him, or anyone else, to die. She doesn’t want any of this to be her fault.

But Sherlock Holmes’s funeral is happening at Highgate in half an hour, and she’s the only one in the entire city who knows he is not in the coffin, which means that this is her fault. The look on John Watson’s face---that last entry on his blog—that’s all her fault, too. Going to Australia won’t change that. You’ve got to be brave, she reminds herself, fiercely, this is your job now.

She realizes that she’s been crying, crying without really thinking about it, tears slipping down her cheeks. Enough. She sniffs, brushes at her face and hopes no one has noticed. Enough.

She is late to Sherlock’s funeral, but that’s fine. There are lots of people there—mainly people, she thinks cynically, who want to get in on the scandal, somehow. She doesn’t talk to John, but that’s fine too, because John doesn’t look like he’s capable of talking.

And when she bows her head at the shining black headstone and her phone buzzes in her pocket, she keeps a perfectly blank face as she opens a text from an unknown number.

_How is it? –S_

_Fine_ , she texts back, even though she knows he means how is _he_ , because what she means is fine. It's fine, she's fine, they're all going to be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> "Australia," by Amanda Palmer. Number three on my Molly playlist, after "Rabbit Heart." (Number one is "What's the Use of Wondrin'", also by Amanda Palmer, if you were curious.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [rabbit-hearted girl (the cowardly lion remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/387268) by [pyrebi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrebi/pseuds/pyrebi)




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